Time is running out for Happ to make it right, to prove that he belongs on the Yankees’ postseason roster, let alone their playoff starting rotation. His start Wednesday night against the A’s, here at Oakland Coliseum, will mark an interesting test.

Yankees pitching coach Larry Rothschild voiced optimism for Happ on Tuesday, before the Yankees’ 6-2 loss to the A’s. Said Rothschild: “I think lately, he’s coming back to what we’re used to seeing, so hopefully it’s trending up, and that’s the guy he is.”

The most helpful piece of evidence supporting that would be Happ’s most recent start, a 6-5 win over the woeful Orioles at home on Aug. 14 during which he allowed two runs on six hits and three walks while striking out six. Happ’s four-seam fastball, his bread-and-butter pitch, averaged 92.21 miles per hour, according to Brooks Baseball’s Pitchf/x tool, which is largely in line with where it has been as of late.

Actually, Happ’s highest average four-seam velocity of the season, 93.34, came at Minnesota on July 24, when he lasted only 3 ¹/₃ innings and gave up six runs.

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Hence the importance of Wednesday’s start. Victimized heavily by the gopher ball — his 29 homers allowed ranked him fourth in the American League entering Tuesday’s action — the 36-year-old can work knowing he has a little more room for error, given the Coliseum’s pitcher-friendly nature. The A’s field a good but not great offense that has spiked in August as Oakland battles for its second straight playoff spot.

To split hairs too heavily on Happ, however, is to miss the greater point: Somehow, Happ has to find a way to pitch better. Because a dive into his numbers do not reveal someone who has much good fortune coming to him.

Let’s start with the most common predictive measure for pitchers, FIP, or Fielding Independent Pitching, which uses exclusively strikeouts, walks, hit batters and home runs to determine how a pitcher’s performance gets influenced by the defense behind him. It’s calculated to “look” like an ERA, and then you can compare the pitcher’s ERA to his FIP.

Happ’s ERA is 5.40. His FIP is 5.55. So nope, Happ can’t point a finger at anyone working behind him holding a glove. To the contrary, his defense appears to have helped him a bit. His xFIP of 4.90, which is calculated by the number of fly balls pitchers have surrendered and measuring against them the league average of those hits leaving the yard, do show him to be unlucky with the long ball, so there’s that.

What should be most alarming for Happ is just how ineffective his pitches have suddenly turned. His four-seamer valued at 14.5 runs above average and his slider 3.4 last season with the Blue Jays and Yankees, according to FanGraphs. This year? -2.2 and -1.6, respectively. That can account for plenty, including FanGraphs’ measured hard-hit ball rate of 40.1 percent, a dramatic increase from 30.9 percent in 2018.

MLB.com’s Statcast, it’s worth mentioning, doesn’t measure a similar disparity, measuring last year’s hard-hit percentage at 34 and this year’s at 37.6. Nevertheless, it’s going in the wrong direction.

If Happ and the Yankees can’t stop the bleeding, if the final 20-plus percent of the schedule proceeds as shakily as what has preceded it, then the pitcher and team face questions beyond the October pitching formula. What do you do with Happ for next year, when he has another $17 million coming to him?

This represents a dilemma the Yankees sure hope they don’t have to contemplate. While they’re not completely out of time in avoiding it. they will need virtually all of their time left to do so.